


Lin gets her name

by Runwildwithme (NectarinesAndSourThings)



Series: Sorority (k)nights [2]
Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Coincidences, F/F, Names, Nicknames, Power of Names, Semi-sentient house, Trans Character, and kay. who was not named Kay originally but fuck that she refuses to be left out., i adore kay she's such a lush, the art/gwennie is only mentioned briefly, to be specific., weird name coincidneces, which surprised me! i had no idea that art was trans literally until i wrote that sentance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 17:41:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13416300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NectarinesAndSourThings/pseuds/Runwildwithme
Summary: In which Lin gets her name, gets a house, accidentally sort of takes up a mantle, accidentally starts something she may or may not regret one day (or possibly immediately), and makes some friends.Not in that order.





	Lin gets her name

**Author's Note:**

> Hello my lovelies! I return to you with more of the Sorority (k)nights, and this time we get a look at their origin! I've hit a block with Feathers, so until I can work out all the grim stuff there I'm amusing myself with silly things like this. :D
> 
> Also: Art turned out to be trans! I was super not expecting that!! But trans she is. There’s a very, very brief moment where Lin thinks of her as male, before finding out Art is actually a woman. I’m not quite sure how it’ll come across to those of y’all who are trans or otherwise non-conforming, so I would super appreciate your thoughts and comments on that.

Lynn picks the name Lynn because it's normal and suburban and a little pretty and absolutely nothing like anything she could ever really imagine herself. 

 

Lynn gets her nickname because of Elsewhere fuckery and will curse anyone who even thinks about arguing otherwise, no, really,  _ try her.  _

 

It happens like this:

 

Lynn gets a reputation, and gets it long before she means to, or really understands what getting a reputation entails. 

 

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. It's never really a  _ good _ thing, mind, but it doesn't have to be a bad thing. 

 

And it's not, in Lynn’s case. She's not a legacy, per se, but her great-great-aunt spent a few seasons at EU before she got married, and so before she goes (and for a few months after) Lynn gets letters full of strange advice and stranger anecdotes, and never with a return address or her aunt’s full name. 

 

So Lynn gets a reputation for being curious (but only about the what, not so much the how or the why, which is the more tolerated question by far), for being a little strange (but not terribly so), a little suspicious (of others) and a bit too incautious (of  _ Others _ ). They don't cancel out as much as one would hope. 

 

She flirts with a chemistry major for the first half of her second semester, and though it doesn't stick it leaves just enough residue that she's Looked at with just a bit of suspicion.

 

She vacillates between the soft and hard sciences, and then ends up torn between Culinary Arts and a track that will, she's told, end with a guaranteed spot in a premier pharmacology program. 

 

By the time she settles on a history major with a minor in English, she's bounced through enough changes of plans that she's a full two years behind, but by then her aunt has passed away and left her a truly prodigious amount of money with the sole instructions being to use it to ‘better herself’

 

SHe also left Lynn a quite frankly obnoxiously large seaside cottage -  called Mer - within easy commuting range of the campus- inside the triangle, even.

 

Which. Ok. Look. By that time Lynn had been around the block a few times, and furthermore had until that point been under the assumption she was attending a university forty minutes away from some podunk town in the middle of the Midwest. 

 

But it's a deathbed bequeathment, which is heavy,  _ heavy  _ stuff and also not anything she can actually refuse. 

 

So Lynn gives up and switches one last time to a double major in chemistry and culinary arts, which both baffles and impresses people out of the know, and makes those in the know avoid her because clearly she's  _ crazy _ . Which was the goal, there. 

 

She can't really stop people from calling her ‘Lynn, of Mer, hahahhaha _get it????_ ’, but she can and  _ does _ throw rock salt at anyone who tries to call her Merlin, and they had best be fucking grateful it isn’t kosher to carry around a sawed-off shotgun on campus.

 

Rocksalt: the best way to say ‘fuck off’ since just about forever, and to more than just ghosts. 

  
  


\--

 

The (k)nights thing is... pretty much Lynn’s fault, yeah, she’ll own that. 

 

Mer is fucking huge, ok? And lonely. And as is the nature of all large houses by the sea, once inhabited by long-dead loved ones, a lonely house is a cold house.

 

Lynn is really fucking sick of being cold all the time. 

 

So after the sixth time the house lets a window swing wide and blows the newspaper open to the classified section, she gives in and makes a post on craigslist about having some rooms to rent out to a few friendly girls who are also attending EU. 

 

The first one to answer is named Arthur, and Lynn is initially very annoyed and a little freaked out because god, _why_ did she actually say she lived alone, this guy is going to show up at her house and murder her. 

 

When he actually shows up, though,  _ she  _ is wearing a long purple skirt and a slouchy grey sweater, eye makeup meticulously done, lips painted a fucking- _ try _ -it shade of dark red.

 

Art -not Arthur, not anymore- is ready to transition, and her roommate from her current living situation is a great big dickbag. 

 

(Lynn asks if Art maybe wants some help about that, but Art waves her off. 

 

‘Nah,’ she says, ‘the selkies are gunning for him,’

 

Which says rather more about just  _ how _ big of a dickbag he is, and also that no one will need to worry about him quite soon.)

 

So the first is Art, who wears purple all the time, and used to be Arthur, and is attending EU with a King’s Scholarship. 

 

And then Art wants to know if it’s cool if her girlfriend moves in, too, and Lynn doesn’t realize until way to late that the girlfriends’ name is Gwennie. 

 

_ Gwennie.  _

 

_ — _

 

The house, of course, is delighted. So delighted, in fact, that none of the floors creak and the windows aren’t drafty and there somehow seems to always be firewood ready and waiting in all of the suddenly-many fireplaces, and also there’s an entire fourth floor and attic Lynn hadn’t realized was there until she  _ got lost _ trying to find the third floor bathroom. 

 

Lynn knows when she’s beat, and sets up a lovey study nook in the suspiciously well ventilated attic, pretends not to notice when all her chem books but none of the others magically migrate up there, and sets about starting an herb garden. 

 

—

 

The third one is Kay. 

 

Who is not  _ actually _ named Kay until the second week she’s inhabited Mer, upon which she suddenly twigs to the unintended naming scheme and promptly demands to be part of it. 

 

Lynn just stares at her, hollow eyed, resigned to the inevitable, and just says, 

 

‘...okay.’

 

‘Oh!!’ She chirps, way too fucking happy for how early it is, and also for how many tequila shots her instagram reported from the night before. ‘That’s perfect! Call me Kay!’

 

—

 

It cascades from there. Gala follows Kay, and then comes adorable freshman ‘Celot who must be protected at all costs, and then Percie and then Tris and then Nim and then Morrie and and  _ and _ . 

 

—

 

Lynn gives in and starts writing her name down as Lin, but goddamn if she doesn’t curse anyone who tries to say the  _ full _ name with persistent hiccups. 

**Author's Note:**

> These girls are just so much fun. I’ve got a few more oneshots I’m working on rn that they show up in, and goddamn if they aren't just a delightful wrecking ball of a plot device. ...They might just show up in Feathers, too.
> 
> Let me know what you think, and if there’s anyone in particular you’d like to hear more about. :D


End file.
